Juan Carlos Cremata questions explanations of his daughter’s death
The filmmaker says he still does not clearly know what happened and describes the difficulties he faced in obtaining information.
Cuban filmmaker Juan Carlos Cremata continues to question the death of his daughter, Yésica Cremata Martínez, who died in January 2022 at age 19. According to his account, she was at her boyfriend’s home and had no known health problems. Cremata says that he has been unable to establish the precise circumstances of her death and has expressed dissatisfaction with the information he received about the case.
Cremata said he called the forensic medicine office for details but was not given the name of the specialist in charge. He also said he was told that the cause was atypical pneumonia. In earlier statements, he explained that he had first been told it was a heart attack and that the other diagnosis was mentioned later. The filmmaker has cited those changes among the reasons he was not satisfied with the explanations provided.
Yésica’s father said the family did not receive a pathology certificate or an autopsy report and that cremation of the body was not authorized. Cremata ruled out COVID-19 and said he has no evidence to claim that her death was intentional. His questions focus on the lack of clarity he says he encountered while trying to reconstruct what happened and on the answers he received about the cause of death.
Yésica’s death had a profound personal impact on Cremata. In March 2023, the filmmaker said that his existence had “lost its meaning” after the loss. Months after his daughter’s death, he premiered the play SOS Cuba, which he dedicated to her memory. The work became an artistic expression connected to his grief while he continued speaking publicly about his doubts and the difficulty of obtaining answers he considered satisfactory.
In later statements, Cremata connected his grief to criticism of the Cuban authorities and summarized his frustration by saying, “If Cuba does not care about the living, imagine the dead.” On another occasion, he said he would devote the time he had left to opposing the Cuban government. Those statements express the political position he adopted after his daughter’s death; by themselves, they do not explain the circumstances of her death.